Wood ashes

[Kmk6891]

So recently my friend switched to lye from pickling lime as a base using Gordo Tek. The thing is that he was not getting anything from the first two pulls, so he then added a hand full of hardwood ashes to the mix. He mainly did this because the lye mixture was so sticky it was impossible to work with. Well it did something because after adding the ashes the next pull was 1g from 150g mhrb.

Anyone else use wood ashes for a base? It definitely got rid of the sticky ness and was able to freeze precip. the goods out so just curious if anyone else uses wood ashes for base. He's thinking about trying ashes as the only base next time to see if it works.

 

[Transform]

Wood ashes have a high content of potassium carbonate, which will react with the lime to form the far more soluble, strong base, potassium hydroxide, along with insoluble calcium carbonate.

I've done something similar by adding sodium carbonate to lime paste. Lime and naphtha won't necessarily work when pulling from bark, so the ashes or soda helps to tweak things in the direction of a STB and breaks down the bark more so that the naphtha can do its job properly.

Lime plus ashes was the traditional way of preparing lye, after all.

 

[Kmk6891]

Wood ashes have a high content of potassium carbonate, which will react with the lime to form the far more soluble, strong base, potassium hydroxide, along with insoluble calcium carbonate.

I've done something similar by adding sodium carbonate to lime paste. Lime and naphtha won't necessarily work when pulling from bark, so the ashes or soda helps to tweak things in the direction of a STB and breaks down the bark more so that the naphtha can do its job properly.

Lime plus ashes was the traditional way of preparing lye, after all.

He added the ashes to an already a/b mhrb mix done Gordo Tek s method except instead of picking lime he used 100% lye as the base.
This resulted in a mud pie that was almost molasses consistency, pretty much impossible to get the solvent to touch all of it.
Then he added the ashes which made it more like mud consistency and easier to pull from.

 

[Transform]

He added the ashes to an already a/b mhrb mix done Gordo Tek s method except instead of picking lime he used 100% lye as the base.
This resulted in a mud pie that was almost molasses consistency, pretty much impossible to get the solvent to touch all of it.
Then he added the ashes which made it more like mud consistency and easier to pull from.

Aha, I get the picture. It's the insoluble parts of the ash thickening things up on the one hand and breaking down the viscosity on the other. Something like that! As though the particles help the solvent to move into the aqueous phase.

Good tip!

If he tries using just ashes it may be necessary to add lime; this would be a good experiment. Plus, some ashes will be better than others depending on the species of wood or other plant they're produced from - data already exists for this.

 

[Kmk6891]

He was kinda Leary of using just straight ash for the thought of possibly contaminating end product with something from the ashes.
But effects seem to be as expected so ....

 

[Transform]

He was kinda Leary of using just straight ash for the thought of possibly contaminating end product with something from the ashes.
But effects seem to be as expected so ....

A certain amount of wariness is warranted - choosing good quality wood and ensuring it is completely free of combustible remnants is important. Ideally it would only have come into contact with ceramic or cast iron. Stainless steel should be avoided completely during the combustion and calcination processes due to the risk of contamination with hexavalent chromium (chromates), and treated or painted wood carries a similar risk of undesirable heavy metal content.

Traditional (from a practical alchemical perspective) lye ash would be dissolved in pure water, filtered, evaporated to dryness and recalcinated in a cast iron pan at least twice before use, precisely to eliminate as much of the aforementioned contaminants as possible.

Soot, in particular is a known source of carcinogenic PAHs for example, which is what the repeated recalcination helps to eliminate.

It's also worth considering how the local terrain might affect heavy metal content of the source wood. Different species will have different bioaccumulation tendencies, although afaik this is more of an issue with fungi - but there are still fairly well-known examples of plants which bioaccumulate poisonous inorganic substances from the soil.